Production
Though Hitchcock had lived and worked in Hollywood since 1939, this mystery/thriller, which is mixed with humour, was made in Britain with London locations. The only members of the cast who are not British are the two top billed stars, Wyman and Dietrich.
Featured is an original Cole Porter song, "The Laziest Gal in Town", performed by Dietrich in a sultry fashion.
Costumes were designed by Christian Dior.
Stage Fright gained some adverse publicity upon its initial release due to the "lying flashback" seen at the beginning of the film. However, some film critics, including those of Cahiers du cinéma, see the flashback as simply being an illustration of one person's version of the events: the events as recounted by the character whose voice-over we hear, which was presumably Hitchcock's intention.
The film has a few extra-long takes, reminiscent of those that Hitchcock used in Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949), both films produced by Hitchcock for Transatlantic Pictures in partnership with Sidney Bernstein and released by Warner Brothers. Stage Fright was originally to be a Transatlantic release, but became a Warners release.
In the biography of Dietrich by her daughter Maria, Maria recounts how Dietrich did not particularly like Jane Wyman, perhaps because they were such opposites. Hitchcock, however, may have utilised this animosity to the film's advantage. At one point in the film, Dietrich compliments Wyman for a change in the way she dresses, when Wyman appears at the garden party.
Howard Maxford, author of The A-Z of Hitchcock: , notes that some aspects of the Edith Thompson and Frederick Bywaters case have similarities to the plot of Stage Fright.
Read more about this topic: Stage Fright (film)
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“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
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